Attica

The fires raging out of control in Attica with high winds making the extinguishing work difficult.

The director of the National Meteorological Service, Thodoris Kolydas said that until the early afternoon hours (5 to 6 p.m.) the northeast winds will remain strong. As he pointed out, the average intensity reached 6 to 7 Beaufort at noon.

Few passers-by rushing along Panepistimiou Street in downtown Athens know that at one time, the old Mavrokefalos Casino at No 64 wasn't just somewhere punters headed when they were feeling lucky but also a meeting place for high-ranking German occupation officers with their Greek collaborators during the Second World War.

All in all it was a quiet session at the Greek bourse on Tuesday, as it seems quite a few investors decided to stay away and wait for news from the Euro Working Group. Most stocks posted small losses but the benchmark rose a tad after the closing auctions.

The turnover of small and medium-sized retail companies in Greece has been shrinking at an annual rate of 5 percent since 2013, while the number of shutdowns in the period from 2008 to 2013 reached 30,000. This translates into a 16 percent total reduction in shops, climbing to 28 percent in Attica, a National Bank of Greece report on retail sector SMEs showed on Wednesday.

Thymios Lymberopoulos, the outspoken president of Attica’s taxi federation, on Thursday declared that any cab drivers found to be working with international ridesharing service Uber, which recently extended its operations to Greece, should be “hanged.”

The future of waste management in Attica could be decided next week, when the board members of the local authority that deals with this issue will be elected.

Checks have been completed on 70 percent of the degree certificates and other professional qualifications of the 2,280 employees of Attica’s regional authority and four workers have been found to have submitted forged papers, regional governor Rena Dourou said on Wednesday.

By Yiannis Papadoyiannis

Market experts expect the deal announced last week between the Piraeus Group and Marfin Investment Group to develop into a broader cooperation toward the merging of enterprises, aimed at creating stronger and more competitive firms.